Monday, November 19, 2018

One of the most common questions I receive from readers via email or at literary conferences is, “Why do you write science fiction?” or “How do you come up with these stories?”.

For me the answer is easy. I write the kind of stories I enjoy reading.

I have always been an avid reader. I was born in 1959 and during the 60’s and 70’s my parents were all about reading. Our house had the biggest library of anyone I knew. As a kid, I only got toys on my birthday and Christmas, but I could have books when ever I wanted. My mother took us to the library every week. There I discovered Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Philip Dick, Arthur Clark, J.R.R Tolkein, Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, Mary Shelly, Bram Stoker, Larry Niven and so many more. In school we studied Jules Vern and George Orwell.

It was also an exciting time for Science. Man was on the moon. Computers were becoming common place. The pace that the world and my imagination were changing was astounding. In the late 70’s while my friends were buying Penthouse and Nation Lampoon, I was addicted to OMNI Magazine.

I am a firm believer if you want to be a writer, follow this advice. Stephen King said, “‎If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot…reading is the creative center of a writer’s life…you cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.” I was already doing the reading side of that equation by the time I got serious about writing at 54 years old. I read about a hundred books a year. Most of them are science fiction. I will never in my lifetime be able to read all the books I want to read, so priorities are essential.

“But why science fiction. Specifically?” They ask.

There are several reasons. Good science fiction has excellent character development, great plots, and exciting settings, just like any genre. But it also allows incredibility creative world building. A simple romance story can be made far more interesting by adding this additional dimension. The romance could be set in the far future, or involve time travel, or after a dystopian apocalypse. Adding the science fiction aspect allows the writer, and reader, to stretch their imagination even further. The classic story, “Boy-meets-Girl, Boy-Loses-Girl, Boy-Wins-Girl” becomes, “Man from the future has to decide between Love and Time itself.”!

Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

There is another aspect to science fiction that is often forgotten. It is easy to make a subtle social commentary using science fiction. If an author isn’t careful, social commentary can be too much if it drowns a story in it. Subtle themes are my rule. I can remember watching the original Star Trek on TV as a kid. I remember vividly an episode titled, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” staring Frank Gorshin and Lou Antonio in the winter of 1969. In the episode, the Enterprise picks up the last two survivors of a ruined planet, who are still trying to kill each other aboard the ship. These were men that were black on one side and white on the other. Mirror opposite of each other. I was nine years old. That story, while full of space ships, aliens and action-adventure taught me about the futility of bigotry using Scifi. I remember, when it was over my father simply saying, “Wow.”

Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered less than a year before. As a kid I didn’t understand the irrational hate of his assassination until I watched that episode of a Scifi TV show.

Over the following 50 years and thousands of books later, science fiction is more relevant than ever in books, movies and television.

As I look down at my smart phone and ask Siri a question it strikes me that I live in the future! My phone understands me as well as the computer on Star Trek. The information within is as immense as the ones on the show.

Friday, November 16, 2018

Tell me about yourself, Clair?

Clair Buss

I have far too much imagination to watch horror movies and I think I'm always subconsciously daydreaming. I adore writing books and get overly excited when someone I don't know likes my stories. I am hopelessly addicted to cake and keep saying I'll go on a diet but we all know that will never happen. I'm a mum to two little monkeys (not literally!), happily married and would spend all my free time reading if I could get away with it.

Tell me about your current Book:

When Corporation tightens their grip on City 42, Kira, Jed and their friend's mu, t find another safe place to live, or else they'll lose their children.

While Martha Hamble gets to grips with being Governor of City 42, Kira and Jed Jenkins travel to City 15 but they are not prepared for what they find. Corporation are tightening their grip on those who don't conform, threatening to split families and reassign the natural born children. With Gaia weakened, the group of friends must try to find a safe place to live and help the spirit of the Earth recover but everything stands against them. Will Corporation succeed in their tougher regime or can Kira and her friends find a new home?

What are you working on now?

I'm currently editing The Interspecies Poker Tournament, Roshaven Case File No 27 which is a novella based in the world of my humorous fantasy The Rose Thief and I hope to have it released by the end of November.

I'm also taking part in NaNoWriMo this year and writing book three in The Gaia Collection. I'm a smidge behind on my word count but I'll get there.

Tell us something that people don't generally know about you:

I have my grade two roller skating qualification.

What is a favorite lesson you have learned about the business of writing?

To not be afraid to put my stories out in the universe.

What is the best piece of writing advice you give to new authors?

Read your work aloud, if you stumble over it so will your readers and it's a great way of checking whether your dialogue is fresh and believable.

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Write the ideas down. If they are going to be stories, try and tell the stories you would like to read. Finish the things you start to write. Do it a lot and you will be a writer. The only way to do it is to do it.
--Neil Gaiman

Monday, November 12, 2018

Aaran has legitimate reason to believe he is the last free-thinking human alive. It's been months since he met someone who wasn't trying to kill or convert him, and the growing angst of nomadic isolation is taking a toll on his already weary state of mind. Aimlessly wandering around the suburbs of Cincinnati, Aaran's days all look the same: find food, evade capture, and search for a dry, offline place to rest his head each night.Rinse and repeat.However, after a close call with a Sentinel--an AI-controlled soldier--Aaran unexpectedly finds himself in the company of Hadas, a beautiful, yet dangerous woman. A shaky alliance is formed between the two, and together, they search for reasons greater than "just surviving" to keep them going in such a godforsaken world.

Friday, November 9, 2018

Tell me about yourself, Mo.

M. L. Humphrey

I’m a retired IBM applications engineer having started back in 1965 with an Associates degree in Electrical Technology from VTC. While working for IBM I acquired my B.S. in Mathematics degree from Trinity College. In later years I was a presenter at, and one-time chairman of, the memory test group at TUG conventions held yearly throughout the country.

After 37 years with big blue, I was retired and started working for an Air Force Colonel (Ret.). He hired me as a part-time printer repairman. To qualify I had to disassemble and reassemble an HP 1100 LaserJet printer. He didn’t ask me to fix it, just take it apart and put it back together, which I did. He told me that every certification I earned would affect my paycheck. He later regretted it.

During the next several years I augmented my education learning many types of printers, telephone systems, and network skills. After several years that type of work dried up and I was back working part-time. When I was laid off this time I decided I needed employment that was both interesting and rewarding; and that I couldn’t get laid off from. So, I kept my best customers and continued working from home a few more years fixing printers. That’s when I started my first novel titled ‘For Lorne’. At present, I’ve published 9 books in print and a couple of dozen eBooks.

Hobbies and other interests:

I have been a musician since I was a teenager in high school. Learned violin in grade school but my interest led elsewhere. As the ‘60’s came along I took up the 5-string banjo and guitar. During college, I played lead guitar in a rock and roll group. Later on, while in the Navy stationed in Alaska, I played 5-string banjo in a folk group on a little island called Adak. After the Navy, I was hired by my cousin as a rhythm player which quickly turned into being the bass player. Picked up mandolin along the way.

Tell me about your current book:

I have several projects in progress as my mind is continually coming up with new ideas. The recent ones are short stories bordering on Novelettes in size. One is a little horror piece about a man, his doctor and a dead man who thinks he’s still alive. Another is about a man who has been impressed with several sets of memories. The latest is about a dying man and a girl he meets in a graveyard.

What are you working on now?

Other than short stories I have two novels in progress. The first is sort of a sequel to my Cornish Talisman Series called ‘My Grandfather’s Spaceship’. Oddly I started this project several years ago and couldn’t seem to get it going. Instead, I came up with the idea to write a story about how the grandfather came to have a spaceship in the first place. That turned into ‘The Orphan from Space’ which, in turn, spawned four more books in the series. To me, at that time, it was a massive undertaking and I enjoyed it immensely.

I had a new idea for MGS and all of the material I had previously written was relegated to another new storyline called ‘Time Fog’ where it now resides. Someday I’ll get back to that one. My motto is ‘don’t throw anything away’. MGS takes place about 40-50 years after book 5 of the Cornish Talisman Series and features some of those characters. I think the story needs a little more excitement so I’ve set it aside for the time being.

The other novel has been a lengthy undertaking. It is essentially a prequel to my first novel and contains a small part of it as well. The title is ‘Battle for Lurandor’ and the setting is sort of ‘long ago and far away’.

It has not been easy combining a piece from the first novel about the starship ‘For Lorne’, a sequel I had written but never finished called ‘Colony’, and a novella that I published under the title of “Beneath the Double Suns’, but I think it is necessary. I have taken these three pieces and glued them together with a new beginning and ending. The story arc spans over two generations. Considering the different POV’s and tenses involved the editing has been exceedingly difficult.

I also have plans for at least one anthology to showcase some of my short stories and novellas. Other than music and writing stories, I also belong to a writing group called Critters.org.

But science fiction is not the only thing I’ve published. A few years back I wrote two stage plays including songs and fake advertisements. Both have been performed live by a group we belong too.

Other than Fiction, I have also written a couple of history articles about the town we live in for the local newspaper and have been asked to write a piece for the history space section of the nearby city newspaper as well. That is still a Work In Progress.

Where is your favorite place to be when you write?

The best place is at the computer in the den. When traveling I would bring a notebook and write notes on current projects as well as any new ideas that come along. Appropriate titles are sometimes the hardest thing to come up with. On the sequel to my first novel, I explained the story to my 10-year-old grand-daughter and she came up with the perfect title, ‘The 5th Agent’.

What is your favorite lesson you have learned about the business of writing?

I think it’s more about the important things I’ve learned. Not only about how to write but how to deal with the finicky publishing industry as well. Probably the most important thing I’ve learned is to do it my way. Some of my critiques have contained useful points about grammar and punctuation, and for that I’m grateful. But, I draw the line when they start to say I should have done this, or that, another way. Sure, I could have had the hero jump back in time to save the girl, but that wasn’t the plan. Yes, I was tempted, but no. Then there are times where I can plan the whole storyline from just a few scenes and tell myself that it is going to do this and that and ending up this way. Hah! As Terry Pratchett once wrote, “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” And it often disagrees with the ‘plan’. Sure, scenes can be wonderful to work with but most often they just don’t go anywhere without inspiration and a goal at ‘the end’.

For inspiration, I draw on many of the old masters that I enjoyed when I first started reading. Now I go back and look at what they have written and wonder if they would even survive the way things are now. Even so, that’s the type of writing I emulate. Nowadays it’s called ‘Young Adult’.

The use of foul language may seem to draw some readers just like nudity in movies. And, in some cases, it may well be realistic for a given situation. But a good story doesn’t need it. Hey, I was in the regular Navy and yes, sailors do swear. But the ones that were really vulgar didn’t.

What is your favorite Website?

I don’t really have one although I use a lot of them while doing research.